I Saw The Sign(s)

Four billion years ago, I wrote a post about some of the signs that adorn my cute little cow town. It was a fun post that focused on quirky, small town type things, like how a large percentage of our street signs are mounted on wood posts instead of metal poles.

That's how we roll 'round these parts. Old school. Wooden sign posts. High school rodeo teams. Festively decorated feedlots at Christmas time.
And the high school proms? They have actual promenades. You know, where the cute couples stroll around at a leisurely pace while their parents and other assembled townsfolk oooh and ahhh? The smaller schools (the ones with graduating classes of under thirty kids) hold their proms in smaller venues where they can actually promenade down fancy staircases. Old school, baby.

I love that our signs give folks a nice taste of our local flavor.

And how convenient was it to pair the USDA office with the dental clinic? If you show up a little early for your six month check-up and cleaning, you can flip though the latest government report about how engineers are using dynamic flux chambers to measure the emission rates of gaseous compounds from manure on dairy barn floors. Much more informative than a copy of People Magazine from 1987, eh?

And if there was any doubt about the prevalence of religion in our culture...

Back when I thought I was brave enough to buy a house, I really paid a lot of attention to street names. Rocky Road was never an option because it is outside of the boundaries of my preferred Stake of Zion, but it could have been fun. And naming a street "Dennis"? Love. It.

I looked at a house on Schodde (pronounced "Shoddy") Avenue. I would have really enjoyed being a Schodde housekeeper, a Schodde gardener, and even a Schodde cook.

And even though I know that "Normal Avenue" was named after the old Albion Normal College (a college for teachers) there would have been so much potential for jokes had I moved there.

The signs around town are usually very helpful and instructive...

... but they can be entertaining at times too.

And I love that the roadkill joke is on a veterinarian's marque that just happens to be located about two blocks down from a taxidermist's shop.

This one went up at the start of last year's fishing season. I liked it so much that I thought about buying some worms from them. But then I remembered that I don't fish and realized that I would just end up releasing the worms back into the wild.

I noticed this one as I drove back from the golf course this morning. Address written in Sharpe? Classy!

My brother Mikey was introduced to this sign when he visited me last month. I don't think he had seen a two-way, one lane road since he left the jungles of Brazil two years ago. I think he was very impressed...

... and maybe just a little bit fearful for his life. Something like this may not work in towns that have actual traffic, but the folks around here are happy to take turns when they happen to meet another vehicle traveling in the opposite direction. We are a very polite people.

We can also be very strait forward and precise when we want to be. No flowery verbiage or superfluity of words needed here.

Of course, sometimes the signs can be a bit misleading. For example, I don't know that "airport" would be the right word to describe our cute little beet field with a strip of pavement down the middle.


But this sign is pretty helpful. The end (or maybe the beginning? I don't know. I've never actually seen a plane on it...) of the runway is less than 100 yards off of Main Street, so the warning is very heartfelt and pragmatic.

While the airport sign may be a tad misleading, this one is either depressingly optimistic or a mean spirited lie.

City center? CITY center? In Heyburn? Do you know what is the CENTER of Heyburn? The post office, the police station, an abandoned barn, and what I'm sure is a very nice laundromat called the Wash Tubb.

False advertising? Perhaps. Had I been in charge, I probably would have rejected "City Center" in favor of something like "Halfway Through the Hamlet" or "The Heart of the Village" or maybe even "Post Office."

But with so many other wonderful signs around (Remember A&S Auto from the other post? A&S Auto, [insert immature giggle here] Remember?!?) I don't want you to walk away from this post with a negative feeling about the local signage.

Therefore, I am going to end this post with my all-time favorite local sign.

I've posted this photo before (I think it was in the same post that had the picture of the straw bales being used as road construction cones) but I think it is well worth re-posting.

It is a sign that really communicates the local flavor.

A sign that practically screams "BURLEY!"

A sign that makes me smile every single time I see it.

I love this sign.

It is a great example of the no nonsense, salt of the earth, hard working, clean living community that I have become a part of.

It just doesn't get much better than that.